Saviours of the Cameroon leaf

IT'S one of the perks of the job as a roving cigar reporter that a) you occasionally get invited to some seriously swanky bashes and b) you continually get to meet Cigar People, for which - generally speaking - you could replace the word 'Cigar' with 'Great'.

I was fortunate enough to dine with Josh and Jeremiah Meerapfel last night at the C.Gars Ltd Summer Cigar Auction. These two lads - lovers of life, there's no way around it - come from a 136-year-strong family bond with cigar tobacco. Their father, Richard, is credited with saving one of my favourite wrappers from extinction.

Cameroon wrapper - the part that forms the 'cloak' of the cigar and gives it its silky feel and looks, as well as an important hit of its flavour - is renowned for its incredibly pure and sweet taste across the palate.

Over dinner, I discussed the leaf with Josh, who along with Jeremiah, now runs the Meerapfel tobacco empire after Richard's untimely death in 2003.

The first - and I guess, most obvious question - was how on earth does the African Cameroon wrapper retain this incredible flavour profile?

The answer, appropriately enough, was indeed because of earth. Virgin, unspoiled tracts of fertile land in the poverty-stricken country contain incredible amounts of magnesium which aid the traditional burning quality of the Cameroon wrapper - fine, white ash with little or no impurities.

"We use no chemicals, no pesticides," Josh told me. "That's why the ash is white, not a dirty grey. The soil gives that distinctive flavour and we use a plot of land to grow our Indonesian-seed wrapper just one season and then leave it fallow for seven years before we use it again. That's organic farming - and that's why you can taste that amazing Cameroon flavour that is unlike anything else on the planet."

Richard Meerapfel stepped in and began growing in Cameroon when everyone else had bailed out in the 1990s. It was a country in virtual civil war, hugely diverse with a population bordering on the starving.

Things are still hard, Meerapfel told me, but the company now employs some 36,000 workers and a foundation started by Richard helps provide schools, hospitals and churches.

It's a moving story, and one day I will stand in a Cameroon tobacco plantation and relay to you what it feels like to stand on that remarkable, virgin earth.

Monty.